source : the age
The captain of the nearest CFA bridge to the property where Dezi Freeman was found on Monday said a 120,000-hectare bushfire that razed much of far north-east Victoria in January had started within sight of the fugitive’s hideout.
Burroweye CFA captain Hayden Drummond was unequivocal: a lightning strike started the Mount Lawson State Forest bushfire, not anything suspicious.
“I spoke to the head investigator. [There’s] not even a slightest bit of doubt,” Drummond said. “He literally found the tree that was hit.”
By sheer coincidence, the blaze started behind Freeman’s encampment on the now-charred slopes about 800 metres from Murray River Road, Drummond said.
Back in September, Victoria Police announced it would offer up to $1 million to anyone with information leading to the arrest of Dezi Freeman. The reward was touted as the largest ever offered in Victoria for an arrest.
If one of Freeman’s associates tipped off the police about the fugitive’s location near the Victoria-NSW border, could they be eligible to claim the cash?
If the person in question did not have a direct involvement harbouring and helping Freeman as he evaded police, then it should be a straightforward case of them claiming the cash, Bond University associate professor in criminology Dr Terry Goldsworthy said.
But if they did, things could become more complicated.
Like the residents of Thologolong, motorcycling enthusiast and vlogger “RidingWithTom” was bewitched by how peaceful and picturesque the region was.
And like the residents of Thologolong, he was stunned to learn yesterday that these same hills had been harbouring Dezi Freeman.
“RidingWithTom” was in the area with some friends earlier this month.
He filmed himself riding down the road featuring the property where Freeman died, and even flew his drone over that very property, capturing some footage. That footage is now with police.
The owner of the remote property where Dezi Freeman was found has been interstate for months and was shocked to hear the fugitive was killed on his land, his brother says.
Fourth-generation Thologolong farmer Neil Sutherland told this masthead on Tuesday morning he spoke to his brother Richard yesterday afternoon and believed police still hadn’t contacted him.
Sutherland said his brother left after Christmas to go fishing in Tasmania and was stunned when he heard Australia’s most wanted man had been shot dead at his old home.
“He was shocked,” Sutherland said. “He had no idea.”
While formal identification is yet to be made, police are confident the man shot dead in yesterday’s standoff is Dezi Freeman. Police said yesterday they expected the process to take 24 to 48 hours.
Police officers and vehicles continue to surround the property on Tuesday, 24 hours after Freeman was killed in a hail of bullets after refusing to surrender.
Most movement in Thologolong this morning has been confined to the media scrum of journalists, cameras and tripods.
“Hey, city slickers,” one local yelled as he drove past the property.
Luke Filby often wondered what became of his fugitive uncle, Desmond “Dezi” Freeman, who shot dead two police officers and injured another before fleeing into the deep valleys of Victoria’s High Country.
Were his remains rotting somewhere in the dense forest?
Was his decomposing body submerged beneath the Buckland River?
Was somebody harbouring him?
Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister: “Oh look, this guy, I just don’t have any sympathy for him. That’s my position. He always was going to be brought to justice and it’s clear that he was always going to fight it out.”
Mike Bush, Victoria Police Commissioner: On commercial radio, Bush confirmed negotiators had a conversation with Freeman during the three-hour standoff that ended in his death. “He said enough during that conversation to confirm he was the person we were looking for,” Bush said. “I doubt he got [to Thologolong] on his own. He has a wide network of friends and associates within that sovereign citizen group. So we’re going to track backwards, work backwards from yesterday to work out who did assist him.”
Beth Knights, who knew Freeman in the 90s: “When I met Dezi Freeman in my early 20s, we were preoccupied with idealism and full of longing for a simpler and kinder world.”
Janice Newnham, Walwa resident: “I thought it likely that he had managed to escape the Mount Buffalo area, but I expected he would be beyond the state boundaries by now. I am more concerned that his enablers might be within our community, since he was on private property.”
For more than 200 days, cop killer Dezi Freeman had been a ghost in the bush, eluding search teams, and leading many in the force to believe he’d died the same day he attacked police on August 26, by his own hand.
But the end to Australia’s largest and most expensive manhunt arrived more than a hundred kilometres away, on the edge of Victoria’s NSW border – after a tip-off from one of those close to the country’s most wanted man.
A source with direct knowledge of the operation to catch Freeman said that a couple believed to have been helping him became increasingly concerned about his erratic behaviour in recent days.
When they reached out to another Freeman associate with their concerns, those conversations gave police their first tangible intel on the man they had hunted for seven months.
Read more about how the operation to catch Freeman unfolded here.
Dezi Freeman lived with his wife and children at a property in Porepunkah, Alpine Shire, when he shot and killed two police officers last August.
He went to school in Melbourne’s Glen Waverley, before moving to Wodonga in 1977.
Freeman had a history of associating with “sovereign citizen” ideology — a fringe belief that government authority or laws do not apply to some people. The disabled pensioner changed his family name from Filby to Freeman as part of his beliefs.
He had several run-ins with the law, including trying to arrest a court magistrate during a dispute about national park access.
Somebody at Dezi Freeman’s old home – the property housing the bus encampment where he murdered two police officers last August – has been having fun with the wild conspiracy theories of where he may have been.
A sign on the newly-repaired and reinforced security fence at the front of the Porpeunkah property includes a fictitious forwarding address for Freeman in South Africa – presumably referencing one of the more speculative theories that Freeman was hiding in plain sight on a Cape Town tourist strip.
The report by the Herald Sun in November stemmed from a Melbourne businessman identified only as Stuart, who claimed to have seen Freeman in South Africa on September 1. He challenged the police’s Summit Taskforce to prove him wrong.
The crude, handmade sign also references the iconic Australian children’s classic Bottersnikes and Gumbles, illustrated by Desmond Digby.
